Original Jazz standard, 'Take a Look Around'

This is my attempt at a jazz stardard, its vaguely based on a minor blues. The guest pianist that played on it is an incredibly good player and played an amazing part.

http://files.getdropbox.com/u/134504/Take%20a%20Look%20Around.mp3

Well, some of the changes are not very solid. It's both the harmonic movement and the way the piano player voices them.

The melody is quite hectic, and very hard to sing. I'd have to say my biggest gripe is with the harmony.

Some of the changes don't really fit with the melody and the soloing is all over the place. Both the piano and guitar players seem to not know where they are in the tune and playing all over the place, not within a certain mode or scale.

I'd recommend toning it down a notch. Try writing something more spacious, don't cram 3-4 changes in a bar. Experiment with longer phrases and longer changes (1 per two bars at least).

Also, there's no symmetry. The odd form gives for a very unbalanced sound when the tune is this busy harmonically.

The flute is flat. The drummer doesn't really swing and uses too much kick drum.

There are a lot of things that I don't like with this recording. If it were me, it would be back to the drawing board for this experiment. No disrespect.

What do you play?

Well, some of the changes are not very solid. It's both the harmonic movement and the way the piano player voices them.

The melody is quite hectic, and very hard to sing. I'd have to say my biggest gripe is with the harmony.

Some of the changes don't really fit with the melody and the soloing is all over the place. Both the piano and guitar players seem to not know where they are in the tune and playing all over the place, not within a certain mode or scale.

I'd recommend toning it down a notch. Try writing something more spacious, don't cram 3-4 changes in a bar. Experiment with longer phrases and longer changes (1 per two bars at least).

Also, there's no symmetry. The odd form gives for a very unbalanced sound when the tune is this busy harmonically.

The flute is flat. The drummer doesn't really swing and uses too much kick drum.

There are a lot of things that I don't like with this recording. If it were me, it would be back to the drawing board for this experiment. No disrespect.

What do you play?

I play bass guitar/upright bass as my primary instrument.

I agree with a lot of these points, however many of them are just the result of having limited resources when it came to recording, the piano player was extremely pushed for time and we only had the chance to do a 1 take all the way through, also my soundcard glitched and he had no drums and just a click + midi melody to record to, I think he did a really good job for the limited resources. The drums are sequenced midi so I tried to pull them back far enough that they wouldn't drive the feel too much themselves, the guitarist was having a bad day and I had to take 8 or so takes and cut them up to get something workable. The singer was ill and only had a few hours to practice the melody and she also played flute, although she's a classically trained flautist and also out of practice so I just wrote out a melody for her and asked her to play it with some ornamentation then cut the takes up and pieced something together. The bass I just never got round to doing, its still midi lol.

Not the ideal situation for recording a Jazz tune, which has definitely factored into the final effect of the track.

I do agree with the points on the chords not always connecting smoothly and the melody being hectic, but this is the kind of effect I was looking for with this song, I'd been playing a lot of standards with changes that almost 'play themselves' such as Summertime, Autumn Leaves, Fly Me To The Moon etc. and I wanted to write something that makes the musicians work a little to make sound good. I really like the melody too, not sure why but I'm just fond of it.

Thanks for the feedback, I'll definitely take it to heart in future.

I'll post the only other 'standard' I've written as well actually (which was about a year and half before this one), it was an arrangement of a folk tune I made previously (you can see it if you look into my attachments or look down in the dadgad guitar thread) so it was never really a serious attempt, just playing around in Sibelius. This one stays in key more due to the having originally been a folk tune, I prefer the B section to the A as I just like its melody better

untitled jazz.mid

Nice voice, very expressive and passionate! I also liked the instrumental solos, particularly the flute, and the soothing background the instruments provided